Chapter 6. Installing Basic System Software

6.24. M4-1.4.14

6.24.1. Installation of M4

Add a missing include directive that prevents M4 successfully
building against Glibc-2.12.1:

sed -i -e '/"m4.h"/a\
#include <sys/stat.h>' src/path.c

Prepare M4 for compilation:

./configure --prefix=/usr

Compile the package:

make

To test the results, issue:

make check

Install the package:

make install

6.24.2. Contents of M4

Installed program:m4

Short Descriptions

m4

copies the given files while expanding the macros that
they contain. These macros are either built-in or
user-defined and can take any number of arguments.
Besides performing macro expansion, m4 has built-in
functions for including named files, running Unix
commands, performing integer arithmetic, manipulating
text, recursion, etc. The m4 program can be used
either as a front-end to a compiler or as a macro
processor in its own right.